This presentation discusses how new technologies have changed market research, examining the impact of new tools through the use of case studies, and assessing some of the pitfalls of digital technology. View Summary

This presentation discusses how new technologies have changed market research, examining the impact of new tools through the use of case studies, and assessing some of the pitfalls of digital technology. A key effect of technology has been to increase the amount of data available to researchers, but much of this data is irrelevant to the business problem, requiring researchers to filter and interpret appropriately. It is argued that three key technological developments have positively impacted market research: online communities which have transformed the innovation process; mobile research which can run in real-time; and in-home video cameras which allow for mass-ethnography. Key pitfalls of digital market research are argued to be: online personas changing reporting, losing touch with real people, the rise of convenience sampling, and the risk of doing it badly.

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More than Just "Snap, Crackle, and Pop": "Draw, Write, and Tell": An Innovative Research Method with Young Children

The current study introduces "Draw, Write, and Tell" (DWT), a creative method suitable for research with younger children between the ages of 5 and 11 years. View Summary

The current study introduces "Draw, Write, and Tell" (DWT), a creative method suitable for research with younger children between the ages of 5 and 11 years. A case study using an advertisement promoting Kellogg's Rice Krispies cereal illustrated how DWT can be implemented in practice. The researchers concluded that the method offers several benefits. Data quality was high as a result of participant and stakeholder buy-in, the application of visualization methods, and the possibility of data triangulation through its multi-method design. Advertisers can use the results for evaluating children's responses to advertising material. What is more, enhanced creativity provides an opportunity for the modification of communications. Limitations of DWT with directions for its future development also are considered.

This paper discusses survey response styles, considering the personal characteristics - such as gender, age and nationality - which create response style and the difference between response style in online, telephone and other surveys. View Summary

This paper discusses survey response styles, considering the personal characteristics - such as gender, age and nationality - which create response style and the difference between response style in online, telephone and other surveys. Response style is a person's tendency to systematically respond to questionnaire items regardless of content, e.g. by giving extreme or mid-point responses on a scale. The impact of dropping or retaining the neutral point on scales is examined and the reliability of different measurement scales compared. Amongst the findings, the research showed that men are more likely to use the negative side of the scale, while women are most likely to use the extreme positive side. Guidelines for designing global online and mobile surveys which take response style into account are developed.

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Let their fingers do the talking? Using the Implicit Association Test in market research

Self-report methodologies – such as surveys and interviews – elicit responses that are vulnerable to a number of standard biases. View Summary

Self-report methodologies – such as surveys and interviews – elicit responses that are vulnerable to a number of standard biases. These biases include social desirability, self-deception and a lack of self-insight. However, indirect measures, such as the Implicit Association Test (IAT), offer a potential means of bypassing such biases. Here, we evaluate the scope for using the IAT in market research, drawing on recent empirical findings. We conclude that the IAT meets several desirable criteria: it yields consistent results, possesses predictive power, offers unique advantages, is relevant to commercial issues and poses no insuperable challenges to adoption.

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One, few or many? An integrated framework for identifying the items in measurement scales

Churchill (1979) proposed a detailed procedure for the development of better multi-item measures that has become popular. View Summary

Churchill (1979) proposed a detailed procedure for the development of better multi-item measures that has become popular. Recently, however, many scholars have challenged this dominant paradigm. They argue that, in many marketing contexts where the target construct has a precise and concrete definition, long multi-item measures can be substituted by shorter measures with fewer items, or even single-item measures. This has resulted in the controversy around the relative superiority of single- versus multi-item scales. We review the extant literature to summarise various arguments in favour of (or against) multi-item and single-item measures, respectively. Moreover, we propose an integrated framework for developing a new scale, reducing long multi-item scales to shorter multi-item measures or to single-item measures, or to expand an existing short (single-item) scale. The significant contributions of this paper to the literature are identified.

This paper outlines new evidence on what happens when questions from major social surveys are asked of online survey panellists. View Summary

This paper outlines new evidence on what happens when questions from major social surveys are asked of online survey panellists. The paper shows how difficult it is to control for 'panellist bias' and produce unbiased population estimates but also that, for some statistics, panel data can provide a surprisingly close match to the gold standard surveys of government.

In the last decade, there has been an explosion in the use of online survey tools. Online data collection tools have lowered the cost of data collection and removed barriers to entry for carrying out research. View Summary

In the last decade, there has been an explosion in the use of online survey tools. Online data collection tools have lowered the cost of data collection and removed barriers to entry for carrying out research. While a number of questions have been raised about the general reliability of internet survey research, one specific use of the web for survey work has been in reaching niche populations that are difficult to access using traditional survey tools – so-called ‘rare samples’. In this paper, we present an approach to accessing such hard-to-reach populations using search engine pay-per-click (PPC) advertising. We carried out a study that makes uses of PPC advertising on search engines as an alternative means of developing a sample for a hard-to-reach group of health consumers. Based on a sample of 466 consumer responses, we discuss the effectiveness of this technique for reaching such rare populations.

Increasing cost differentials between modes of data collection and countries are requiring users and practitioners to consider more cost-effective survey designs. View Summary

Increasing cost differentials between modes of data collection and countries are requiring users and practitioners to consider more cost-effective survey designs. Using a ‘fitness for purpose’ framework, the argument is made that the tools exist to enable objective evaluation of alternative designs using a variety of methods within a common framework that can be shared by all survey users. The paper argues that coverage will be one of the largest sources of potential bias in any survey using data-collection methods other than face-to-face or mail. The calibration of coverage is therefore a pre-requisite in any discussion of alternative survey designs.